Psychological Health From the Teens to the 80s: Multiple Developmental Trajectories

Data from the long-term Intergenerational Studies are used to explore men’s and women’s psychological health trajectories from early adolescence to late adulthood, as elucidated by Nagin’s (Group-based modeling of development. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005) finite mixture modeling method. Two separate measures of psychological health, one from the California Q-sort (CQS; Block in The Q-sort method in personality assessment and psychiatric research. Thomas, Springfield, IL, 1961) and one from the California Psychological Inventory (CPI; Gough and Bradley in CPI manual, 3rd edn. Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto, CA, 1996) are used, with a maximum of six pooled points of data collection. Distinct subtypes of developmental trajectory are uncovered, including patterns of nearly life-long trajectories of stability, as well as trajectories of increasing psychological health. For both measures of psychological health, the most common path (53% for CQS data, and 46% for CPI data) is that of relatively high initial psychological health with a subsequent modest linear increase. Results from the two measures neither perfectly replicate nor completely contradict one another. Both indicate the existence of discrete subgroups of change, including stability of psychological health for some and significant increase for others.     

Men’s and Women’s Change and Individual Differences in Change in Femininity from Age 33 to 85: Results from the Intergenerational Studies

This investigation illustrates men’s and women’s change in femininity, and individual differences in change in femininity from early (age 33 or 35) to late (age 78 or 85) adulthood. Members of three long-term longitudinal samples (total N = 327) provided California Psychological Inventory (CPI) Femininity scale scores, collected a maximum of five times. Application of longitudinal hierarchical linear modeling indicates: (1) both men and women show significant variability in initial level and change in femininity, (2) gender predicts both individuals’ initial level and change in femininity—the average man, initially low in femininity, becomes significantly higher in femininity across the lifespan; the average woman, initially high in femininity, becomes significantly lower in femininity across the lifespan, (3) change in femininity is unconnected to marital or parental status, and (4) change in femininity is connected to psychological health level for women only—more psychologically healthy women show a decline in femininity, while less healthy women increase their femininity level. Overall, results support Jung’s androgyny hypothesis of a cross-over of gender roles in men and women, but do not support Gutmann’s hypothesis that such cross-over is tied to “parental emergency.” Additional exploration of the data indicates Gough and Bradley’s (1996) CPI-derived personality types also predict femininity initial level for women and femininity change for men.     

Familiarity breeds attraction: effects of exposure on the attractiveness of typical and distinctive faces

Several studies have shown that facial attractiveness is positively correlated with both familiarity and typicality. Here we manipulated the familiarity of typical and distinctive faces to measure the effect on attractiveness. In our first experiment, we collected ratings of attractiveness, distinctiveness, and familiarity using three different groups of participants. Our stimuli included 84 images of female faces, presented in a full-face view. We replicated the finding that attractiveness ratings negatively correlate with distinctiveness ratings. In addition, we showed that attractiveness ratings were positively correlated with familiarity ratings. In our second experiment, we demonstrated that increasing exposure to faces increases their attractiveness, although there was no differential effect of exposure on typical and distinctive faces. Our results suggest that episodic familiarity affects attractiveness ratings independently of general or structural familiarity. The implications of our findings for the 'face-space' model are discussed.     

Longitudinal hierarchical linear modeling analyses of California Psychological Inventory data from age 33 to 75: an examination of stability and change in adult personality

Twenty aspects of personality assessed via the California Psychological Inventory (CPI; Gough & Bradley, 1996) from age 33 to 75 were examined in a sample of 279 individuals. Oakland Growth Study and Berkeley Guidance Study members completed the CPI a maximum of 4 times. We used longitudinal hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to ask the following: Which personality characteristics change and which do not? Five CPI scales showed uniform lack of change, 2 showed heterogeneous change giving an averaged lack of change, 4 showed linear increases with age, 2 showed linear decreases with age, 4 showed gender or sample differences in linear change, 1 showed a quadratic peak, and 2 showed a quadratic nadir. The utility of HLM becomes apparent in portraying the complexity of personality change and stability.     

“Man Is a Wolf to Man”: Disorders of Dehumanization in Psychoanalysis

A key component of dehumanization is the loss of personal credibility experienced by victims whose trauma and abuse have gone unwitnessed or unconfirmed. The scant or doubtful attention to victimization in orthodox psychoanalytic theory, where the late introduction of the destructive instinct favored analysis of the predator, has only underscored the victim's anonymity—a conspicuous shortcoming in our time of genocide and crimes against humanity. Yet victimization, as illustrated in this paper's case material, reveals relational conflict as compelling as classical intrapsychic conflict: between urges to keep silent or to speak and between concealment and habituation to human abandonment or reparative search for witness. What therapeutic neutrality is to psychic reality, therapeutic witness is to the recovery of social reality and one's right to live in it.     

Cognitive Processes While Writing Poetry: An Expert-Novice Study

To identify expert poets’ cognitive processes as they compose poetry, we asked 10 expert poets and 10 novice writers of poetry to think aloud as they composed a poem. Compared to the novices, expert poets revealed an associative playfulness and surrendering of consciousness, similar to that shown in research on general creativity in domains such as art, music, and science. Experts also demonstrated significantly more evidence of deliberate procedures and active revision. Novices rarely revised their poems. With regard to meaning, experts made significantly more comments about how the text was meaningful, in particular how textual elements evoke and amplify meaning, than about what the text merely meant. The novices commented more on what the text meant than how the text was meaningful. In discussing the results, we propose a model of the cognitive processes involved in poetic composition, and explore implications for instruction in school and post-secondary educational settings.     

Bullying and victimization among black and Hispanic adolescents

The prevalence of bullying and victimization by gender, grade level, and race/ethnicity was examined among a sample of low socioeconomic, Black and Hispanic 6th- to 12th-graders in a large urban school district in Texas. Bullying and victimization were measured using specific behaviors. Students were classified as bullies (7%), victims (12%), bully-victims (5%), or neither (76%), depending on the number and frequency of reported experiences. For specific types of bullying (e.g., spreading rumors, excluding others), 4.5%-9.4% of students reported participation. Specific types of victimization (e.g., being hit or pushed, picked on) ranged from 6%-12%. Gender differences were not observed for general bullying and victimization, but physical and some verbal types were more prevalent among males. Blacks were more likely to participate in bullying and victimization, and these experiences seemed to peak in the 9th grade. This study adds to the literature as few U.S. studies on both general and specific types of bullying have been conducted among low socioeconomic, racial/ethnic minority students in middle and high school.     

Back to Basics: The Psychoanalytic Conceptualization of Motivation

Reconsideration of motivation, a fundamental concept in psychoanalytic theory, engages us with basic assumptions and postulates of our field and draws us to the borders with neighboring scientific elaborations of the design, structure, and function of the mind. This paper presents a concept of motivation from a perspective in modern conflict theory and correlates this concept with current thinking in evolutionary biology. The challenges that this correlation raises for all psychoanalytic approaches to motivation are discussed. Natural selection has fundamentally organized motivation in accord with the principle of inclusive fitness. Adaptive motivations of self-interest achieved through social success are paramount. In mind sciences there is a growing appreciation of the innately modular mind with mounting evidence for domain and content-specific evolved psychological mechanisms, the modern term for instincts. In regard to motivation in modern conflict theory, evolved mechanisms and predispositions are innately linked to pleasure–unpleasure and include, importantly, motivations of self-interest. The pleasure–unpleasure principle regulates motivation throughout life. Early mother–child interactions are vital to the development and contextualization of motivation; however, these interactions themselves depend on mutually coadapted mechanisms that give vectors and impose constraints on every primary relationship. In evading innate contributions there is a danger of embarking on a new creationist paradigm.